


Carrot and Oyster Pie

by orphan_account



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fem!Ori - Freeform, I love orcs so much, M/M, Mentions of Violence, adopted dwarves, dwarves are raised not born, elf!Dori, fem!Kili, fem!dori - Freeform, hobbit!Nori, mentions of animal death, mix of film and book canon, orc!Ori, this will probably have too many orc headcanons in it be warned
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-19
Updated: 2014-10-03
Packaged: 2018-02-17 23:49:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 23,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2327612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn't so odd to see a dwarf too tall for most ceilings, like Dori was, or one with big feet, like Nori. But when Ari took in a baby with sharp teeth and grey skin, it was generally considered that she was maybe taking it a bit far.<br/>Good think she's never cared much for what people say.<br/>All of her kids are dwarves, even when their shape isn't the most expected one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. orphans

**Author's Note:**

> hello and welcome to I love orcs too much for my own good so I had to make Ori be one.

The child was standing in the middle of the street, crying among the people running, and no one seemed to care. They must have thought that the parents would come to get him and take him to safety, away from the beast that was ravaging their city. But Ari had seen several houses collapse already. She had seen people die, and for all she knew, the child's parents were among them.

She didn't really think when she dashed ahead and grabbed the little one. She didn't think either as she started running toward the nearest gate, so fast that she couldn't feel her legs anymore, that her lungs were burning, and her arms were hard and stiff from holding that toddler so tight against her chest. She continued running as long as she could, until there were just too many people everywhere to even walk.

It looked like the entire mountain had stepped out, but Ari learned later that it was only a very small part of them. She took a moment to catch her breath, and check that the child had not been harmed while she ran. It was during that inspection she discovered that it was not a dwarf child at all. Not with ears like that, and so little hair. A little elf then. She'd _heard_ that the ambassador had a child, and also one of the kitchen girls, who acted as a wet nurse when the ambassador was busy. Ari wasn't sure any of these people had survived, but surely she would find in Mirkwood someone who would take the child in. She might not even have to walk there: the elves were allies, they would certainly come very soon to give them food, maybe even help them kill the dragon.

Comforted by that thought, Ari took off her shawl, and used it to tie the baby to her chest. She'd done it for her little cousins sometimes, and it was easier than to carry it in her arms. Once the baby was safely attached, Ari went to look for her family. She didn't want to think about her parents yet, because they had been visiting a friend's mine when the dragon came, but she had two aunts and one uncle who lived near the surface of the mountain, not to mention more cousins and distant relative than she could count. She didn't know them all, but she bore the braids of a Ri, and anyone who was family would take her in until things were better.

After wandering for the better part of an hour among the people who had fled the mountain, Ari found one of her aunt, her favourite one even. Geri, her four children and two grandchildren welcomed her warmly, as well as the baby, and since Geri's eldest daughter was still nursing her baby, she offered to feed the one Ari had found too. Slowly, a few more Ris joined them, one by one or entire packs at once. A lot of people had found their way out, but as the survivors talked, it became obvious that a lot more of people _hadn't_. Dri said that ze'd seen on of the great streets going to the mines collapse, and if that was gone, then a lot of smaller paths must have been destroyed too.

“But the elves will come,” Dri claimed. “They are certain too. They're our friends, and their people have killed many dragons, back in the days!”

Everyone agreed on that, and when the rumour reached them that everyone was to start walking toward the lake by order of king Thror, the Ri family decided as one that they had to be going to Mirkwood.

It was only past sunset, when everyone stopped to rest, that the _other_ rumour got to the Ris: the elves had come already, they had been on their way to Erebor when the dragon attacked, but they had turned away without so much as a promise for help. They were not going to Mirkwood for help, they were going to Esgaroth to buy food, and wait until the messengers who had been sent to the Iron Hills came back to tell how many people Nain could welcome in his halls.

“Not many I reckon,” Geri muttered darkly. “And they will prefer people who have connections to them, which we don't. Are we supposed to stay in Esgaroth until the dragon dies then, living aboveground like Men?”

“Prince Thrain said we might go West to the Blue Mountains,” her son Greri told her. He'd managed to go listen to the royals talking about what would happen next, and he'd gotten close enough to hear everything. “There's some old abandoned city there that could be nice. But the king said that we might try to see how things are in Khazad Dum.”

“But what about Durin’s Bane?” Ari gasped.

“Well, it was a long time ago, so I think they’re hoping it has died of hunger?” Greri suggested, but he looked unconvinced. “I think they just don’t know what to do, same as the rest of us. But maybe if Nain comes, we can kill that dragon.”

That started a bit of an arguments among the family. Greri was seen as a bit of an optimist for thinking that the Iron Hills, which wasn’t the biggest kingdom around, might make much of a difference against such a monster. What they needed, almost everyone agreed, was some help from the Orocarni kingdoms, because the people there were used to dealing with dragons.

Elves, on the other hand, were globally recognised as useless and not helpful at all.

“Isn’t that baby you found an elf?” someone asked Ari when she went on a rant.

She looked at the little one in her arms. It had eaten, which was more than any adult could say, and it was sleeping now. It looked so very young, although who knew with tall people? So young and innocent, and wouldn’t it have been cruel to send a toddler to people who could abandon their allies so easily?

“It’s not an elf,” Ari decided. “It’s a dwarf. It’s my child now. Dori.”

Her mother had been called Dari, so the name felt like a good one. No one objected anyway, not really. Someone did mention she was a bit young to be a mother, especially through adoption, _especially_ adoption of one not born of two dwarves. But Geri, who at the moment seemed to be the oldest survivor of the family, only asked to see the child, and kissed its forehead, accepting it into the family.

Ari held her child close, and hoped that things would work out fine.

 

 

It had been, and by far, one of the harshest winters they'd had since they had come to live in the West. Even Dori could feel the cold, and coming from a girl who only bothered with clothes for reasons of propriety, that meant a lot. The day Dori had asked for a scarf, Ari had known that things had gone bad. Food was not too much of a problem, because they were dwarves, and knew how to make plenty with little, and how to make it last too. But the cold seeped even deep within Belegost, and if they could not fall to the sicknesses of Men, winter could still kill them if they were not careful.

“Which is why we need more wood,” Ari had explained to Greri, who had become head of the Ri family after the death of his mother and sisters in the Orc Wars. “There's a forest on the Halflings lands, it's a bit of a long trip, but it will give us what we need to stay warm for the rest of winter.”

And there was a chance to find a wolf or two that way, Ari had heard. Wolf pelts sold for precious money, but she hadn't told that to the others. She'd have to give a share of the money to the fund, and the wood she'd give for free to the family, but she had to finish paying for Dori's apprenticeship and every penny would help. Greri had agreed easily, in the end, if only because he knew better than to tell Ari what she could do.

So there they were now, Dori and her, with a cart full of wood and a dozen wolf skins.

There had been a lot more wolves roaming the lands of the Halflings than Ari had expected. She'd known the cold would make them leave the forest, but this was more than it should have been. Dori was convinced that the biggest one they'd killed wasn't a wolf at all but a warg. Ari hoped that her daughter was mistaken, because where you found wargs, you also found orcs.

And in the end, they _did_ find orcs.

Three of them, pursuing a pair of halflings, and killing them before Ari and Dori could do anything. They hobbits were swiftly avenged, but Ari would have preferred to save them.

“Dig in the snow near the road,” she told Dori. “The ground's too hard to bury, and I don't want to imagine what people will think if they see dwarves bringing in dead halflings. Maker knows it's already hard to make business with them, no need to make it worse. Put them in the snow, their people will find them in the spring, hopefully before beasts do.”

While Dori obeyed, Ari had a look at the orcs' possessions. A few coins of copper, some weapons, but not much. It was a harsh year for everyone it seemed, although one orc had a nice looking necklace. It was made of silver and shaped like a star, and Ari almost missed it, hidden under several layers of leather and dirty cotton. It was odd to think of an orc owning something pretty, something with no other use than its own shape, and so Ari decided to keep it, along with the coins. The rest she did not need, and she was not kind enough to care if wolves eat _those_ corpses.

Once she was done searching she stood up and looked around to find that her daughter had disappeared.

“Dori?”

“I'm here amad!” came the answer from a little bellow the road, behind a bush heavy with snow. Then, after a moment of silence. “Amad, I think you should come and see.”

“I'd rather not leave the cart alone dear. Can't you tell me what it is?”

“Not really, it's... Oh, just wait!” Dori asked. “I'll try something.”

There was some movement around the bush, and Dori's voice faintly whispering something. When she stood up again, the tall dwarf was holding something in her arms, close against her chest.

“I heard him crying,” Dori explained, kneeling down and bending to show a small child in her arms. “I think those were his parents.”

Ari couldn't help a small cry. The child was tiny, with a tuft of bright red hair on his head, and lips blue from the cold. Which was no wonder really, seeing as he was barefoot. Ari had three pairs of socks in her boots, and even like that her toes felt ready to drop off at the first chance.

“Oh, let's wrap him up!” Ari cried, removing her coat to put it on the little one. “Poor child...”

“I wonder if it's old enough to talk?” Dori said, shifting her arms to keep the coat tight around the child.

“It's not likely, it doesn't even have teeth yet. And even if it could, after a shock like that...”

Ari sighed. They still could not go near a halfling settlement, not with a recently orphaned child and two corpses... and she did not want to drag the bodies of the orcs just to prove their stories... Not to mention that she was fairly sure that the wood might be considered stolen. Which it might have been. Ari had never really cared to ask if the forest belonged to anyone.

At the same time, abandoning to child was out of the question.

“Dori?”

“Yes amad?”

“How would you feel about having a brother?”

The look of pure shock on Dori's face might have been amusing at another time, but Ari was dead serious. The child would die alone, but they would risk what little good will there was between dwarves and halflings if they tried to bring it back to his family.

It wouldn't be the first halfling-born to become a dwarf anyway. They had so many children that they did not always know what to do with them, so that some escaped and met dwarves. Escaped or were abandoned, which made little difference in the end.

“Well, he looks like a quiet child,” Dori carefully answered. “And he seems to like me. I think we'll get along just fine.”

“Then it's settled,” Ari decided. “See if you can make him eat a little to warm him up, and I'll... do what has to be done for his poor parents.”

By the time Ari was done with this grim task, Dori and the little one were sitting on the driver's seat of the cart, the child chewing joylessly on a piece of cheese. He looked a little less scared though, but not nearly close to smiling yet.

He was smiling however, by the time they got back to Ered Luin. Smiling and climbing all over the cart, just as bad as a squirrel. Not one week in the same family, and little Nori was already driving Dori mad, although she seemed to enjoy it as much as Ari did. They'd lead a quiet life for the most, a little disruption would be good for them.

 

 

It had been bad luck to be attacked by orcs when it was Nori's first real travel out of the mountains, but at least no one had been wounded seriously. Still, Ari was glad that she'd decided against a family trip, and that the twins had stayed safely underground with Dori.

Not that Nori seemed to realise that of course, too busy bragging to his cousins that he'd killed one orc. Something for which Ari would need to have a word with him, because she had given him strict orders to stay away from the fight if they ran into trouble. And Nori had a certain talent for twisting words into what he wanted to hear, but even he could _not_ say that shouting and rushing toward orcs with daggers in both hands was staying away from the fight.

But that conversation would come later. There was an odd sound coming from somewhere nearby, a sound that Ari did and didn't recognise. Like a wail, but very faint, as if it were coming from under something heavy...

Walking around the scene of the fight, Ari found at last the source of that noise. It was an orc who had fallen on its face, one of Nori's dagger in its neck... or rather, it came from under the creature. It took some effort to roll the corpse on its back, but Ari managed it.

And there, she found a baby, tied against the body of the orc with a long piece of fabric.

Ari did not know what shook her the most. That orcs had children at all and took them into battle, or that she'd so often tied her own children to her that same way when they were little and she had things to do. She did not like to think that mere orcs might have anything in common with her.

The little orc was crying louder now, or maybe it was just that Ari could hear it better. In any case, old instincts kicked in, so she cut the child free from its restraints and took her in her arms. That calmed him a little, and when she put a finger to its mouth, he sucked on it like a real baby would have.

“Where d'you find _that_?” Feri asked, looking over her shoulder. “Careful, it'll bite you!”

“It's too young to bite,” Ari retorted distractedly, observing the baby.

It was so small, it couldn't be very old. A couple weeks at the very most, or it might even have to be counted in days. It was lucky to have survived first the fight and then the fall of its mother.

“'Mad, that one's got a necklace,” Nori announced, crouched next to the mother. “It's the one I killed, means I get to keep what it had, right?”

“Show me?”

Nori stood up quickly, and held out the pendant he'd snatched for the orc's neck. It had been years, and the shape wasn't entirely the same, but it was the same sort of star that she'd found on one of the orcs that had killed Nori's parents. She'd sold that other one long ago, just for the standard price of silver, but she wondered.

“I'll have that, Nori,” she ordered. “It belongs to the child.”

It wasn't a surprise to hear her son protest loudly that he'd earned that. It wasn't a surprise either when Feri put a hand on her shoulder, frowning.

“You can't be serious, Ari!” he hissed. “It's an _orc_!”

“Not anymore. It's a dwarf now. _My_ dwarf.”

Nori fell silent, staring at his mother in horror. Ari could feel the other looking too, but she didn't care. The child was still sucking eagerly on her finger, hungry for a milk she couldn't give him. Just like Dori when she'd taken her in, so long ago.

“The family will not allow that, Ari,” Feri warned her. “That _thing_ will never be a dwarf!”

“It will be, if we raise it as one,” she snapped. “And do you really think I need the family's permission to have a child? I'm rich enough to manage without you if you cast me and my children away, Feri. In fact, your father should be careful, because it's not him who got the deal for the cotton with the halfling, and it's not him either who found how to sell it to the Grey Havens. Get rid of me, and the Ris might have more trouble without me than they had with me.”

She smiled sweetly at Feri who stepped back while the rest of their little group stepped closer, looking at Ari and the odd child in her arms. Nori hesitated a second and then came to his mother's side, one hand ostensibly on the handle of his favourite dagger.

Feri wasn't the sharpest tool in the box, but even he knew better than to start a fight with Ari and her children.

“It's going to die anyway,” he spat. “It's too young, and we haven't got milk.”

“There's a village two hours from here,” Ari retorted joyfully. “Last I came through it, they had goats there, and it's the right season for them to have milk. That child is lucky, Feri, isn't it?”

The only answer was a shrug, and then Feri turned away. He ordered that everyone make ready to leave and they obeyed, avoiding looking at Ari and the baby in her arms. She didn't blame them, not really. Humans and halflings were one thing, and Dori hadn't been the first elven-born dwarf (though Ari _did_ hope that her daughter would fare better than Eol of Nan Elmoth had) but an orc? That was something new and scandalous indeed, and maybe the family would not forgive her this newest eccentricity.

“It's really ugly,” Nori commented, looking at the baby. “Got even less hair than me. Less hair than Dori, even. You really gonna keep it, 'mad?”

“Yes I am, if you and your siblings allow it.”

Nori seemed to consider it for a moment, and then smirked.

“Yeah, let's keep it,” he decided. “Dori's less on my back when there's a baby around, and the twins are getting too grown for her. She's gonna be starting to braid my hair if we don't find her something to get busy. But what're we gonna call it?”

“Ori, maybe?”Ari suggested, rocking the little one in her arms. “Yes, I think would be nice. Now love, how about you go get our ponies? I've got my hands full right now, and I'd rather not give Feri an excuse to leave without us.”

Not that he was likely to do that, or that they couldn't catch up if the group tried it. But Ari had a feeling she would have to be on her best behaviour for a little while if she wanted to convince people that she could properly raise her newest child.

A little while, and then she'd go back to doing exactly what she liked, as she had always done before.


	2. Nori's good day

It was a good and pleasant day, the sun was shining through the air vents and in the poorer parts of town, the light mosses were particularly bright. It was a good morning, and Nori celebrated it by pretending to steal someone’s purse on the market place, right where Dwalin could see him.

Dwalin was a mountain of a dwarf. He was so huge that an ant would have taken days to walk from his heel to the top of his head, and it would most likely get lost long a couple times. And that bald head of his made him look even taller (“like he’s outgrown his hair” Nori had once described him, which had made the twins laugh) (they were the only ones with an appreciation for humour)(and his stories, where he turned Dwalin into the fearsome guard of an evil lord). And he wasn’t just tall. Anyone could be tall. But Dwalin was also large, all of him muscle and strength.

And Nori, who was both the smartest dwarf in Belegost and the least clever (with no in-between), loved to teased that mountain.

It was so much fun to see the moment of doubt in Dwalin’s eye, when he couldn’t see for sure if Nori had the purse in hand. It was funnier still to start running and know that Dwalin would have to run after him just in case. It was a game Nori played with most guards, but Dwalin was his favourite pursuer.

As soon as he was sure that he was followed, Nori started diving between people's legs and under market stalls, jumping out here and there to be sure that Dwalin could see him. It was the good and the bad of hair that red, made him easier to spot in a crowd. Now and then he stopped and stuck out his tongue at the big dwarf running after him and taunt him and see how he was doing.

Badly, as always.

Where Nori could easily find space to move in the crowd of the market, slithering between people and under them, Dwalin was like a boulder tried to cross a river. He couldn't make a movement without pushing someone or disrupting a stall. When he almost overthrew a crystal seller's little shop, Nori started laughing so hard he had to stop running, and Dwalin almost caught up with him then.

Almost, but not quite.

For the better part of an hour, Nori played that little game with him, making the guard run back and forth across the market, all his colleagues watching them go and occasionally trying to help. Usually his unwilling playmates were usually out of breath at that point, but Dwalin could have gone on for twice that and still have energy left. Nori wasn't tired yet, but he knew he would be sooner than Dwalin. Beside, he had been paid to distract the guards for one hour, no more. If he started working overtime for free, people would start taking him for a fool. So he turned to Dwalin one last time, smirked, bowed, and disappeared.

On his way home, Nori bought some of his favourite biscuits, spending almost all that he'd earned. Not much choice though, if he wanted to have a few left for himself when he'd have let the family dive into it.

One hour of fun with Dwalin, biscuits, the assurance that he'd be everyone's favourite sibling the instant he stepped in the house, and it wasn't even noon yet.

It was going to be a _good_ day.

 


	3. arguments

It wasn't that Dori didn't love her oldest brother. Nori could be quite charming when he wanted to, and on occasions, he could even be genuinely nice and loving. But just because Dori loved him didn't mean she could excuse everything that he did. The argument was an old one between them, and Dori wished they would stop having it. She also wished that she could have brought their mother into it, but she knew that to do so would be to lose for ever the love of Nori, and she couldn't resolve herself to it.

The matter was simple. Nori around his mid-twenties, had seemed to reach a certain degree of maturity that meant he no longer was a child. And instead of choosing himself a good trade to learn, he had started hanging out with people that Dori could only qualify of suspicious, and who were dragging him into a life of decadence and moral corruption.

On a good (or bad) day, Dori thought she could understand sometimes the appeal of being accepted by such people, when Nori was barely half as strong as most dwarves, and a good head shorter too. Then again, he wasn't the only hobbit-born in Belegost, and the others weren't under surveillance of the watch, on account of suspected burglary and poaching.

“Can't say that when you and 'mad found me while _stealing_ wood,” he liked to remind her, cocky smirk on his lips as if he’d won the fight already.

“That forest doesn't belong to anyone,” Dori always countered, which was true, even if they hadn't known at the time. “The lands _you_ set your snares on belong have owners, you have to right to hunt there.”

“Well, if it's theirs, they should protect it better,” Nori would retort with a laugh. “Cause it's all so badly guarded, a hobbit could get in!”

Sometimes Dori would find something to protest, and sometimes she wouldn't. She'd tried pointing out that it was a bad example for their younger siblings, but usually that just made Nori laugh harder. Or else, it made him angry because even he didn’t want that sort of life for the little ones, and he didn't come home for days, sometimes weeks.

“Is it my fault?” Ori would then ask, because poor soul, she seemed to think everything was her fault. She too had bad friends, although of a different sort. Dori was trying to keep an eye on that, and to find her nicer people to play with. Nori turning to a life of crime was a pity, but if Ori started going bad out of a need to be accepted, or if one day she got in a fight because of the way these kids treated her, then they'd all be in trouble.

“It's not your fault,” Dori promised her each time. “It's just that Nori can't stay in place. It's the feet I think. Things so big, they're made to walk the earth!”

Sometimes, that was enough to make Ori smile again.

The twins, on the other hand, were entirely undisturbed by their brother's frequent absences. They were, in a way, far more pragmatic than Ori, and they knew that Nori always brought back presents when he left for long. Where he was in between didn't seem to bother them too much, which Dori believed to be more _trust_ than indifference. It might have been also that they were still so young, barely twenty. They still believed all of Nori's wild stories. Tales of saved nobles and fights with brigands and how he’d been eaten by a warg once, but he’d cut it open from the inside and escaped. Ori might have been only half their age, but _s_ _he_ was starting to understand that Nori didn't always tell the truth.

Maybe it just came from being dwarf-born though, because Ari too seemed to put faith in what Nori told them when he came back. She didn’t believe his strangest tales of course, but she never questioned the money he claimed to have earned working with caravans. Although maybe _that_ was a true story, because for all that Dori knew, smugglers too travelled in caravans.

Or maybe it was just Ari deluding herself and refusing to see the truth, because she had that weakness for Nori. He was the only one she felt guilty for taking in, the only one who might have had a decent family, she sometimes said.

“It would have been criminal to send you back to live with elves in Mirkwood,” she would tell Dori, grimacing at the thought. “And Ori would have died, or she'd have become an orc. But Nori... maybe we should have tried to give him back to the halflings. He might have had relatives, and we never were sure that it was his parents who died. He might not have been an orphan at all!”

“Well, no one missed him enough to ask around,” Dori liked to remind her. They'd tried to ask around when spring had come again. They had asked to dwarves who were allowed to work for the halflings, and Dori had even once gone there herself, but so many people had died that winter that they weren't keeping track anymore. “He's never seemed unhappy here anyway, but you do spoil him too much.”

“And if I didn't spoil him, who's to say he wouldn't leave for good next time?”

It certainly wasn't as probable as Ari seemed to fear, Dori liked to think, but it was a painful subject for her mother, and she never liked to insist. It was just too awful to see their mother sad, it made the twins melancholic and Ori guilty. Which was why Dori couldn't bring her fights with Nori to Ari, and also why she so often fought with her oldest brother in the first place.

Maybe if she could find the right words, if she could show Nori how much they loved him, short and weak as he was, he would stop trying to prove himself to the wrong people and become an honest dwarf at last.

Or maybe she was just as blind as her mother, and trying to fight a battle she could never win. Ari wasn't the only one to have always spoiled Nori after all.

  
  



	4. biscuits

Ori looked at the shelf, then at the twins who looked back expectantly.

“But _amad_ said no, didn't she?” Ori mumbled. “We're not allowed.”

“But biscuits,” Tori retorted.

A fair point indeed.

The facts were these: Nori had brought home biscuits. Very good biscuits, with dried raspberry and a brown thing called chocolate. They were, without a doubt, the best things that his siblings had ever tasted, and they would gladly have devoured the whole pot in one afternoon. Their mother was of the rather odd opinion that this might make them sick, and spoil their appetite for dinner. Tori, Bori and Ori had begged and promised that they would be good and eat anything she'd want, no matter how bad it was, as long as they could have biscuits before.

She had been unmoved by their pleading, and had forced them to eat spinach that night (which Bori adored, but she tried to not eat them anyway, out of solidarity)(and then, when their mother and Dori where not looking, she ate her share, and her siblings', and she was a little sick that night, even without biscuits).

Of course, Ari was not a cruel mother. She did let her children have some of the wonderful treats that their for-ever blessed brother had brought home. But she let them have only one per day, and the three of them agreed that it was nothing short of torture to let them have so little, so they needed more. Only, the biscuits were on the higher shelf, the one even Ori couldn't reach (but she certainly would by the time she turned five, they'd heard Ari say).

They had tried climbing on a chair, but Dori had caught them and now removed all the chairs from the kitchen when they were not eating. Not to mention that they had been punished by having no biscuits at all that day.

They were sulkily playing together the next day when Bori had an idea. She was watching Tori climb on Ori, and Ori running around the room as if she weren't carrying a full entire brother. They were making an awful lot of noise, which was distracting Bori's attempts to make a plan to steal back the chairs and then steal the biscuits. And as she watched her siblings, Bori realised that while Ori couldn't reach the shelf on her own, maybe Tori on Ori's shoulders might. It was almost the same plan as before, only even if they were caught, Dori couldn't confiscate Ori, so they would get to try again.

Which was why they were in the kitchen.

Only, Ori was having doubts. She had them sometimes. Bori didn't see the point of doubts, especially when there were biscuits to eat. It was morally right to eat biscuits, always, because it was the fate of biscuits to be eaten, and if they didn't eat them, then their biscuity existences would be wasted.

But Ori was having doubts.

“We'll get punished,” she mumbled.

“We're punished already,” Bori said. “We didn't have biscuits yesterday. Maybe we won't today! Maybe she's still angry! Maybe we'll never have biscuits again!”

Tori and Ori gasped in horror at the thought. Their mother had never given any indication that she was the sort of person who would do such a thing, but one never knew.

At least, that convinced Ori. She grabbed Tori's waist and, with little effort, lifted him so that he could easily take the pot of biscuits. Nothing had ever been easier. The biscuits were _theirs_.

Of course, that was when Dori had to come in, alerted by the unnatural silence of the house. They all looked at her. Tori was still in Ori's arms, and holding the pot of biscuits close against his heart, like he might have done with a favourite doll. Bori was the most innocent looking, but that didn't mean much when she was known to be the brain of all their operations.

She demonstrated that by being the first to run out of the kitchen, right between Dori's legs. Tori soon realised how much trouble they were in and he tore himself from his sister's arms and ran after Bori, barely avoiding Dori's attempt to grab him.

Ori didn't run, didn't move. She was too big to go between Dori's legs, or even to go through the door in the little space that Tori had used. Dori seemed a little sorry for her, and Ori certainly felt a lot sorry for herself. It wasn't fair that she was always the one getting caught, when it was always Bori's ideas that got them in trouble. She said it, too, but Dori didn't seem too moved.

“You know she'll get you in trouble,” she pointed out. “You should stop listening to her. Listen to the little voice that tells you if things are bad or good. What did the little voice tell you this time?”

“It said bad,” Ori pouted reluctantly. “But _biscuits_!”

Dori bit her lip and shook a little, as if she wanted to laugh but also didn't want to _admit_ that she wanted to laugh. She did that a lot. Usually, she did it when Nori told stories.

“Well, I think you've lost your chance at biscuits,” Dori smirked. “And instead, you're going to come help me. I need someone to sort out the threads for me.”

“But I don't see colours!”

“Which is exactly why I'm asking you dear. You're sure to mix colours better than I would, and putting things back to how they should be will be a wonderful punishment for Tori and Bori when they come back.”

“They will _never_ come back. They have _biscuits_ now!”

This time, Dori couldn't entirely stop herself from giggling. But she still put Ori to work, without the slightest ounce of mercy. And as she tried to make sense of the threads and to organise them by how light or dark they were, and by texture, she promised herself that she would never again listen to Bori.

Or at least, not unless her siblings had kept a few biscuits aside for her.

 


	5. Ori

Ori was going to turn twelve when she came home covered in bruises, and Ari decided that something had to be done. In a couple hours the bruises had faded, as they always did, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t left a trace on the poor girl.

Twelve, for a dwarf-born, was young, _very_ young. Tori and Bori were more than twenty, and they were just starting to draw some letters right, but only the easy ones. They could recognise some words if they saw them written, but only if the calligraphy was the right one, and they’d seen the word before. Meanwhile Ori was half their age, could read without problems, and she was advanced enough in her writing that she’d started worrying about _spelling,_ and she played with numbers and calendars whenever she had a moment of freedom _._ And the three of them didn’t really share the same games either. The twins loved to play pretend, or to create stories with their dolls, whereas Ori now wanted to have conversations about a number of subjects that bore them. She still played with them, but it was for the twins' pleasure more than her own.

Ori had tried to find friendship with older children of the neighbourhood. They had begrudgingly tolerated her among them, out of fear of her family, but they had made it very clear to her that they didn't _like_ her. She was even more unhappy that way than she'd been playing with Tori and Bori, and it had made her full of a pent up anger Ari didn't like at all. They had taken great pains to explain to her since very young _why_ she should never fight back if someone attacked her. She’d always obeyed so far, but recently she had confessed that she felt close to exploding sometimes, when the others insulted her family.

If Ori ever lost her self-control it would be justified, Ari was sure of it, but that wouldn't change the fact that people would jump on that chance to brand her an orc and get rid of her, one way or another.

 

The best way to avoid that, Ari had decided, was to put her youngest to work. Preferably in a quiet trade, since she was a quiet girl. Ari had hoped for a while that it might be possible to make her a weaver, like Dori and herself. Ori listened and worked hard when they asked her to help, and she would have learned the trade if she'd thought it would make them happy, but she had little interest for it otherwise. She preferred, and by far, to doodle on every surface she could find, or read anything that she could get her hands on. These were good qualities for a copyist, as Ari knew very well, because the dwarf who had sired the twins had been one.

She invited hir one afternoon, when the children had gone to the market, and asked hir if ze would take Ori in, on account of the old friendship between them.

Ze refused, and even laughed to her face.

“No one will take in your little monster!” Tren told her. “You should count yourself lucky they just let her live.”

“She’s as much of a dwarf as the rest of my children. She’s certainly got more of a head for tradition than you've ever had.”

By which she meant that when Ari had found herself pregnant, ze should have offered to marry her. She would have refused anyway, because ze certainly wasn't what she wanted in a spouse, but it didn't change the fact that ze was supposed to _ask_. Ori was twelve and _she_ knew that much already.

Tren just sneered at that. “Tradition isn't what makes a dwarf. You can pretend if you like, and I'll admit that the other two can make an illusion, but you could teach that orc everything that dwarves have done and said since we were made, and it will still be an orc. An educated one, but it doesn't make a difference. One day that little monster is going to wake up with a taste for blood, and she won't care anymore what poetry Durin the Deathless has said. She'll just see that you're a dwarf while she's not, and she'll rip your head off.”

It wasn't the first time that Ari heard something of the sort, it wouldn't be the last, and it never failed in making her furious. She knew her daughter better than any of them, poor little Ori who had tried to stop eating meat for nearly two weeks when she'd heard Feri laugh at her at a family gathering. Ori had told Dori how much she loved the chicken they'd been served, and her cousin had claimed for all to hear that very soon, she'd start enjoying chicken so much that she wouldn't be able to wait until it was cooked, or even dead.

Still, some years earlier Ari had fancied herself in love with Tren, and until that day she'd still considered hir a friend. It hurt to hear one of the few people who still seemed on her side talk in such a way of her youngest.

“Well, I think that settles it then,” Ari retorted coldly, going to the door and opening it for him. “I'll find her another master then. You're hardly the only copyist around.”

“No one in the trade will take that creature,” Tren repeated, smirking. “You need a soul to copy books.”

“Then I'll make her a scribe. As I've said, she knows about tradition. She'd do good.”

Tren laughed loudly, as if that were the best joke of hir life, and Ari glared. Would people mind terribly if _she_ went a little orkish and ripped off _hir_ head? The temptation was atrociously real.

“You know, I've heard lord Balin's looking for an apprentice and that he takes them for free,” Tren sniggered, finally stepping out of her house. “Maybe you should try that. You'd want the best master for your little monster, wouldn't you?”

The door slammed shut on hir face, but Ari could still hear hir laughing outside until he walked away.

When the children came back at last, Ari was still fuming. Ori noticed it at once, and made sure to send the twins to their room before she helped Dori put away everything they'd bought. She was a good child, and a good dwarf, that girl. Far better than Tren, or that any of these kids who picked on her for not being dwarf-born. And she was clever too, and eager to learn.

Maybe she did deserve the best master in Belegost.

“Dori, love, do you know if my silk dress is clean?”

Her eldest put down on the table the cabbage she was holding, and considered the question.

“I think we never managed to remove that tea stain on it,” she eventually said. “But you have that very nice purple one, the one Nori embroidered when he was sick last winter.”

“It's not as nice, but it will do. Now, can you hurry tidying up all that, and go ask Dri if ze'd mind keeping an eye on the twins this afternoon? Tell hir I'll pay hir for it. And then, I want you to put on your best tunic, dear.”

Dori exchanged a look with Ori who nodded, and she dashed away, letting her little sister to put things away.

“Are you going somewhere, amad?” Ori asked shyly.

“And so are you love, so you're going to hurry with this, and put that very nice tunic I finished for you last week, and your little wool hat, the one with the braids.”

Ori grimaced. She wasn't too fond of the hat, thought it looked foolish. She only wore it when her mother insisted, and Ari did insisted often enough. There was no hair to braid on Ori's head, no way to claim her as a Ri but to make her wear that hat which had little braids of purple wool, tied the way her hair would have been.

“Do I really _have_ to, amad?”

“Yes, love. Because we are going to get you the best apprenticeship in all of Belegost, so you'll have to look nice to impress master Balin.”


	6. Balin

Balin looked at them with a smile, but then, he had been trained for the court of Erebor as a child. He could have looked a dragon in the eye, smile politely, and talk of the weather.

Ari daughter of Dari and her children weren't quite as bad as a dragon, of course, but not by much. It had been quite the scandal when she had adopted her youngest. Then again, it had been quite the scandal when she'd adopted _any_ of her children, Balin had heard. Taking in an elf-born right after Thranduil had betrayed them and denied them any help had not been what most might have called a wise move. And there had been a few questions asked when she'd brought in a halfling-born, although not as many as there were now (questions such as “where was your son last tuesday?” or "Do you know where to find him we need talk to him about a burglary"). Everyone had hoped Ari had grown wiser when she'd had her twins, but then, she'd adopted the latest one.

Balin glanced at the child, half hidden under a big woollen hat and and an even bigger scarf, until the only thing visible was a long grey nose and small piercing eyes that were carefuly avoiding his own. It wasn't much, but it was enough to betray what she'd been born as.

“I'm not quite sure I understand why you have come to see me,” Balin said at last, turning again to Ari. “You want me to help you find a teacher for your... daughter?”

“Not quite,” Ari replied with a smile just as sweet and polite and Balin's. “I want you to take her as your _own_ apprentice. I have heard you were looking for one?”

“Ah. Well, indeed I am, but...”

Ari's eyebrows rose in a silent question, as if she dared him to refuse before even hearing her. She'd almost become head of the Ri family when old Greri had died, Balin suddenly recalled, but she had refused the honour...

B'alin's mother had always advised him to be careful around people who did not seem to want power. Usually, it meant they already had it and didn't want to call attention on it, and Ari did look like the sort of person whom an official title would only hinder.

“Of course, you must realise that I cannot take just anyone in,” Balin explained. “You are not the only proud parent to have brought me a child. The work I do is of utmost importance, I can only take the best...”

“Then you must take Ori,” Ari assured him. “She can read and write as well as any adult that I know, she calculates our auspicious and bad days since last year, and she is currently teaching herself how to read runes. Her brother got her a book on it for her last nameday, and she's done the rest alone, because no one at home reads runes.”

“And how old is she?” Balin asked, before he could remember that he was not supposed to even consider the idea of teaching that child.

“Just twelve, my lord,” said Ari's other child. Dori, if he remembered, or something close enough to it. Balin rose his eyes toward her, and she smiled just as artfully as her mother. “We think that if she were dwarf-born, she would be fifty maybe, perfectly old enough to start learning.”

“ _Twelve_ and she can calculate auspicious days?”

He hadn't managed that until his late fifties, and that had been with a private teacher since he'd been thirty.

“She's got a head for numbers,” Ari said, her tone humble in a way that only someone truly confident could manage. “Languages too. We've been forbidden to teach her Khuzdul, but she has still picked it up from hearing others speak it, and she knows a few words of elvish too, as well as the Halfling's tongue.”

Next to her mother, little Ori was trying to hide herself further into her scarf. It seemed that orc-borns could blush as well as dwarf-borns, because what Balin could see of her cheeks had turned a darker colour. And that, almost more than her mother's boasting, convinced him to look at her work at least.

Her hand in writing was also very much like that of any dwarf's that Balin had seen. Better than some perhaps. Unrefined though, the hand of someone who had not had formal teaching and had just learned by copying from a model. Her 'a' and 's' were in a different style of calligraphy than the rest, possibly because they were easier to make that way. Her calculations were full of mistakes, but she had the general principle right, and the fault came only of her ignorance of less known rules. As to her Khuzdul it was rather pitiful, but still better than Balin would have expected from one denied the right to formally learn it. He'd seen other young people who'd had better opportunities than that child, and who didn't do half as well.

If only she had not been orc-born...

“Of course,” Ari said sweetly as Balin gave back her daughter's work, “we will understand if you decide not to take her.”

“Will you indeed?”

“Oh, yes. If this were Erebor, I would not worry, because I'd know my daughter would be allowed the same chances as any dwarf-born, but I understand that things are different in Belegost. People have made it quite clear to me that adoption doesn't mean here what it meant home, not even when your child had been accepted by the family. Times are cruel, and now dwarves are born, not made.”

She smiled.

Balin smiled back.

There were not many people in the city who would have dared to openly accuse him of no longer upholding the traditions, and fewer yet who would have done it to his face. He might have agreed to take in the child just for a chance to have a chat here and there with her mother.

But that little Ori, odd as she was, deserved to be his apprentice even for her own qualities anyway. It would upset a few people of course, and Balin was glad Thorin was out of town for a few months because that wouldn't be an easy one to explain... but it was never good to be too popular in politics anyway. Usually meant you were doing something wrong... and beside, at least _this_ apprentice would not run off to get married like the last one.

“I hope you are punctual, miss Ori,” he told the child. “I want you here tomorrow at eight. Dress comfortably, and don't worry about bringing any material, I'll give you what you need to work with. It's easier that way, and I'll be sure you have something of decent quality.”

The child stared at him with wide eyes, as did her mother until she thought better of it and nudged her daughter's ribs.

“Yes sir!” Ori pipped, her voice higher than Balin had expected. A real child's voice, not so different from a dwarf-born's. “Thank you sir!”

She did look happy, smiling as widely as Kili did on a good day (although she showed a lot more teeth) and her eyes shining bright. Balin was glad of it. Absolute enthusiasm was the least he could ask for from a student who would cause him so much trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> friendly reminder that writers are vain little things (well, this one sure is), and that comments are always appreciated.


	7. Dwalin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for mention of past character death

“I feel I should warn you,” Balin welcomed his brother that night, “I have a new apprentice.”

“That's good,” Dwalin said. “Still sorry about the other one.”

Balin just shrugged, a little more nervously than was common for him maybe. It had been an odd affair, and Dwalin still felt bad for his role about it, small as it had been. He'd asked one of his new guards to come by his house with him to check on some obscure law that on convict had tried to use against them. He'd been certain Balin would know, one way or the other. Only, it hadn't been Balin who had opened but his apprentice, and it had been love at first sight between him and the young guard. They'd rushed their whole courtship and gotten married after six months, and she'd gotten with child before even that.

“Some people try for decades and don't get pregnant,” Balin sighed. “I do not pretend to fight against fate. And the new girl might be a lot more passionate about work than... flirting. She doesn't really have the face for it.”

The remark was strange, coming from Balin, whom Dwalin had never heard do something as petty as comment on the looks of someone. He always found something more interesting to insult if he needed to say something, because people couldn't really help their face and body, whereas they could help the fact that they were close minded elves with the curiosity of a dead troll. Dwalin had questioned once why the troll had to be dead, and learned that live trolls were, on the whole, very curious creatures who were always willing to try new things to eat.

“You might want to sit,” Balin advised him, pushing his brother toward their most comfortable chair. “Really, sit.”

Dwalin obeyed. It was best to obey when Balin was nervous.

“Now, brother,” Balin said, sitting in the less good chair. “I'm sure you must have heard of Ari, daughter of Dari?”

“Mad Ari? The one with the children?”

He'd gone to see her once or twice. He was pretty sure her halfling-born son was that dwarf who kept causing trouble everywhere. Many people had whined and complained when Mad Ari had adopted her orc (some even coming and asking Dwalin to go arrest or even straight out _kill_ the creature) but if Dwalin was right about her boy, then he was the real troublemaker of the family. Halfling-borns didn't often turn wrong, but this one was turning so wrong that he was spinning in circles and making the watch go dizzy in his place.

“It's her daughter I've taken as my new apprentice,” Balin explained.

“What, the elf?” Dwalin grunted.

It wasn't that there was anything wrong with Dori. Most people seemed to forget about her height after a while, he'd heard, unless they needed someone to get something on a high shelf. She was decent enough, considering what she'd been born as.

But Balin shook his head.

“The _other_ daughter.”

“But her twins are just twenty, isn't that young?”

Balin shot him a severe look.

“The _other_ other daughter,” he said. “Her orc-born. She's...”

“You didn't!” Dwalin roared, jumping from his chair. “That monster? Here? In our _home_?”

The very thought was sickening, and at imagining that creature there, in their house, the place that should have been safest to them... it brought back images that Dwalin had taken years to deal with, memories of orcs killing friends and kin, in a place they should have been able to call home too.

“Thorin will never allow it!” Dwalin toned. “ _I_ don't allow it! For all we know she was at Azanulbizar, she might have killed and devoured people we know!”

“She is _twelve_ ,” Balin retorted dryly, “and she was adopted as an infant. I doubt she did a lot of killing before her mother found her, and I think Ari is clever enough to have made sure the child wouldn't even harm a fly.”

“She's not a child. She's not even a she, she's an it! And that monster will not come in our house... stay alone with you... what if it _attacked_ you?”

Balin sat a little straighter on his chair, and threw an unimpressed look at his brother.

“ _She_ will not attack me, and even if she did, I have fought better trained orcs in my life. She couldn't harm me if she tried.”

The old dwarf rose from his seat, and put his hands on his brother's shoulders. Their mother used to do that when Dwalin was a child and throwing a fit about something she felt was silly. Balin didn't do it often, but the gesture still calmed Dwalin quickly, whether he liked it or not.

“I will do my best so that you don't have to see her,” Balin promised. “If you tell me in advance what hours you are working each week, I will make sure that she comes after you've left, and leaves before you are back. I won't have her here on your days off.”

“Why have her at all? Plenty of good, real dwarves in Belegost and around. Why that monster?”

It wasn't that Dwalin thought she should have been executed, as some people did. Beside being born the way she was, she hadn't done anything so far to justify her death. But there was a potential in her that was dangerous, and she should have been kept away from good, honest people, just in case.

And Balin too seemed unsure for a moment, before he smiled grimly.

“Her mother showed me some calculations the child had done,” he explained. “Good and bad days, that sort of things. And little Ori had tried to figure out if the stars and numbers had tried to warn us what a bad day it would be when the dragon came. Anyone interested in these things does. And she found what we all found.”

Dwalin grunted and nodded. He didn't fully understood that business of auspicious and inauspicious days, except that it was important and sacred and needed a lot more brains and patience than he had. But Balin had told him once that the day Smaug had come and destroyed all their lives should have been one of the most auspicious Erebor had known since its foundation, and the information had stuck with him.

“People always try to change variables to make the day a bad one,” Balin continued. “But she didn't. She saw the result, and even if it meant that the numbers had been wrong, she didn't try to hide it. Now _that's_ the sort of pragmatism I need in an apprentice. And she'll be desperate to do good, too. I could use some real effort I'll tell you, because Erig wasn't very hard working even before he decided to get married, and Hron before him never did more than the bare minimum. Don't even get me started on Gir, I still don't know why I took _him_ in. But this girl seems serious about what she does, and that'll be a nice change for me.”

“But she's an _orc_ ,” Dwalin instead, shivering in disgust. “She might be the granddaughter of the one that killed our mother!”

He could see it still, the broken body of Fundin... and they'd never been able to give her a proper grave either. Not to Frerin either, the poor, sweet little prince who should never have fought there... So many dead, and with the orcs still so close, they'd been forced to burn the bodies as if they'd been nothing more than animals. Who knew if the warriors had ever found the Halls like that, reduced to ash and smoke instead of being given back to the stone...

“Dwarves certainly killed _her_ mother at least,” Balin replied calmly. “It was her brother's first kill. She doesn't seem to resent him though. Adores him even, she lit up whenever her mother mentioned him. If an orc can forgive a dwarf for the murder of kin, then I hope that dwarves can forgive a child for being born the way she is. Or if you can't forgive her for being alive, allow me to teach her anyway. Allow me to try. And if her presence is really too hard on you, I will send her to another master, one whose household has not suffered our losses. Can you _try_ , Dwalin?”

The very last thing Dwalin wanted was to try. An orc was an orc, and that was the end of it. But Balin was his brother, his elder, and he rarely demanded anything unless it seemed important to him... and if they _seemed_ important to him, they usually _were_.

Maybe just a few weeks then, to show that he was trying, and then he'd have the creature sent away.

Balin seemed sincerely relieved when his brother agreed to give things a chance, but Dwalin was not happy. He barely slept that night, plagued by images of his mother, of Frerin, of all the others whose name he'd never known and who were all furious at him for tolerating the presence of a monster in his house.

 

For the entire first month, Dwalin did not once see the little orc. Balin kept to his word, and made sure they never had a chance to meet. He spoke about her though, and at length. Her formal education was greatly lacking, and Balin complained about how much he had to start from scratch with her, but he seemed mostly happy about the whole thing. The little monster did not seem to mind when she was told she was wrong or had made a mistake, and she appeared to work hard to do better each time.

Dwalin tried to be happy that his brother had finally found a decent apprentice, but he couldn't quite bring himself to it.

He'd have preferred if Balin had been less happy, but with an apprentice who was a real dwarf.

 

When Dwalin first caught sight of the little orc, it was at the market. She was there with her family. Her mother and elder sister where carrying what they had bought, the little twins were running around and laughing, and the orc was in the front. She was burrowed from head to toe in clothes and scarves, but people still seemed to know what she was and they avoided her. It meant that behind her, the rest of her family didn't have to worry about being pushed by the crowd.

If she was this practical with Balin, no wonder he liked her. Balin had always been in favour of using people's prejudices against them, saying it was much easier than trying to make them change their mind.

Beside, she didn't look so threatening. No one could wear that shade of purple and look dangerous.

Dwalin wondered if that was done in purpose.

If a tenth of what he'd heard about Mad Ari was true, it was.

 

The first time Dwalin found himself in his house while Ori was there, she made him it. Balin wasn't there (gone to see a client, she's stuttered) and tea had been the only thing she'd found to escape Dwalin. When she had brought him a cup at last, she was shaking so badly that half of it ended on the floor. She wiped it all, very conscientiously, and flinched in terror when Dwalin turned to her to compliment her tea.

He wasn't sure why he'd done that. Maybe because she really had felt like a terrified child at that moment, not so different from the one who trembled and cried when they were arrested for the first time. If you played it right, and made sure the families knew where to get help, the kids never stole again. And if thieves could get a second chance, maybe a kid whose only crime was to have been born deserved a _first_ chance.

It was still a relief when Balin came back and sent the little orc home.

“I thought you'd be home later,” he told his brother. “And I thought I would be home earlier. How was it?”

There was something of a warning in Balin's tone, as if he feared that his brother might have threatened his apprentice. The child had certainly run fast enough once she'd been allowed to go, so it was a fair assumption.

“She made me tea,” Dwalin just said. “It was good tea,” he added after a moment of reflection. “But you should tell her that tea's pointless on its own. She's got to bring biscuits too. That's bad manners, tea without biscuits.”

Balin smiled, and promised to mention it.

 

Next time, Dwalin got his biscuits.

The girl was still shaking pretty badly when she brought them, but that time, a little more of the tea came to him. Dwalin took a little more time to observe her, which made her visibly uncomfortable, but he had to know what he was going against.

She didn't move like an orc. Dwalin had seen orcs in their camps sometimes, when travelling with caravans of merchants or with Thorin. Even when they were not fighting, they had a way of handling their bodies that wasn't like other creatures, trying to make themselves bigger at all times, trying to take as much space as possible as if they feared someone else would take that space otherwise. But the little orc was making herself smaller instead, all bend and hunched down, so that she seemed to be about as tall as Dwalin, and her every gesture were slow and careful. Dwalin had done that in his youth, when he'd started growing so big and he'd been been told he might hurt people if he weren't careful.

It was unpleasant to think an orc might have anything in common with him. But she was trying to make herself harmless, and that was good.

He didn't have any nightmares that night, or if he did, he couldn't remember them.

 

Dwalin was the one who made tea when he next found himself in the house with Ori. She wasn't shaking so bad now, and she apparently told Balin (who repeated it to his brother with a smile) that Dwalin had looked less murderously at her this time.

He still didn't like the idea of an orc in his house, and he still couldn't fully bring himself to accept that Ori was a dwarf.

But until that point, Dwali, had been counting the weeks, wondering when he could tell Balin that he had really tried and that the whole thing had to end now.

He stopped doing that.

For better or for worse, Ori was there to stay.


	8. The new apprentice

Thorin had been gone for nearly a year, going around and trying to negotiate contracts for the workers of Belegost. It had not been an easy task, even with the precious help of Gloin, who could have sold trees to an elf. The Blue Mountains were not such a bad place to live in, but it left them with a poor choice of neighbours. The elves of the Grey Havens didn't care about much except their ships. The Halflings wanted only food, and going to their lands meant having to convince the Rangers that the dwarves meant no harm, which wasn't an easy task (but at least the rangers themselves were often willing to buy a sword or a knife, although they rarely had the money to follow that will). And there were a few Men here and there, living in the valleys and the plains, but they were peasants for the most, and had neither the interest nor the fortune for dwarven made objects.

Still, they had done better than Thorin had expected, and for once he had good news to bring back in this place he was forced to call home. And it was good, too, to be welcomed by his family. Kili jumped in his arms and would have make him fall on his back if Fili hadn't been there to prevent it, hugging him tight. Dis wasn't as demonstrative as her children, but she too held her brother in her arms before she started asking about his trip. Thorin gave his news, and listened to theirs.

He was home, or as close to home as he could ever hope.

The following day, Thorin went to see Balin, to review these new contracts, and see how they would chose the dwarves to realise them.

“I feel I should warn you,” Balin said as they sat down at a table, “I have a new apprentice.”

“Is there a risk they'll mess anything up?”

Balin's last apprentice had not been the best scribe the world had known, not by far. Son of a good, noble family, but Thorin had been rather glad when the boy had decided to drop everything to raise the child his ladyfriend was bearing. Maybe this time, Balin had found someone competent.

“I don't think her work will be a problem,” the old dwarf assured him. “She's a good, hard-working girl who double and triple checks everything she does. An excellent surprise, really, but she's... when you meet her, you must be warned that she's...”

“Introductions will have to wait another day,” Thorin cut him. “I have promised the rangers they would have their swords for the spring, we have to get to work now if we want to keep our word.”

For a moment Balin appeared to hesitate, but he did not insist and they started working and discussing who the best choice would be. Gloin had suggested a few people, some of whom Balin approved of, while he refused to have anything to do with others. Twice the apprentice came in, first to have a work of hers checked, and when she understood that her master was busy, she came again a little later, bringing some tea and a few biscuits. The old one had never brought tea. Thorin liked that one better already, even if she seemed to dress oddly.

 

It was a busy couple weeks after that, and Thorin had time for little beside meeting smiths, weavers, and other artisans to give them work. Most readily agreed to these new contracts offered to them, but a few others had to refuse because they already had too much to do, or in one case, because they did not want to do anything for the elves of the Grey Haven. Thorin did not blame them for it. He wouldn't have gone there at all, if Dis had not so insisted. Only the Ri ever went there frequently, but they didn't like to take royal contracts if they could help it.

These changes of plan meant that he had to go see Balin frequently to prepare new contracts with new names. His queer apprentice was usually around, but Thorin never had the occasion to be properly introduced to her. He did notice that Balin seemed a little nervous whenever she came where they were, and that he would look at Thorin with something very much like worry, but the king decided it was of no importance. Apprentices were not his problem as long as they did their job, and this one certainly did.

She also kept bringing them tea. The mark of a good apprentice, Thorin decided.

 

It was more than two months after his return that Fili and Kili came to find him at his desk, looking as if they'd done something bad, or were about to do it. It was not an uncommon look for them, although Thorin still had hope that they would grow out of it.

“Uncle, we've got something to ask,” Fili asked. “You might not like it, and we won't do it if you disagree...”

“Although you'd better have a good reason for it,” Kili grumbled, which got her an elbow in the ribs and a glare from her brother.

“What is this about then?” their uncle sighed. “I've told you already that if you want to come on my next trip you'll have to check with your mother, not me.”

True, so far he'd asked Dis to refuse because the children were not serious enough, but they didn't need to know that.

“No, it's about Balin's apprentice,” Fili explained. “He's always talking a lot of good about her, and she seems nice in spite of everything... and she doesn't have a lot of friends beside her siblings. And she _laughed_ at one of Kili's jokes once. We've been thinking of trying to be friends with her for some time now, but we didn't want to risk it while you were gone, because it's quite the symbol and you might not have liked it. We wouldn't have dared it without your permission.”

“Since when do you need my permission to have friends? Go talk to that girl if it pleases you. I don't think I've ever pretended to control your affections.”

The children looked at each other. Fili was frowning in concern, but his sister looked like she might start laughing any moment.

“Uncle, are you saying that you haven't met Ori yet?” she chuckled.

“I have,” Thorin assured his niece. “She makes tea for Balin and me when I come talk about business, and that's about it.”

Kili giggled at that, for which her brother elbowed her again. He too was smiling however.

“Haven't you noticed anything odd about her then?” he asked. “About her appearance?”

Thorin shrugged. She was a tall child, taller than Dwalin even, although she walked bent like an old woman. And she dressed queerly, always covered from head to toe, keeping a wool hat even inside and a scarf, so that there was little more than the tip of her nose visible. But Thorin did not judge on fashion choices, as he told his niblings.

It must have been the wrong answer because Kili started laughing out loud, and even Fili had trouble keeping a straight face.

“Uncle, there's no nice way to say it,” the prince explained between two fits of giggles. “But Ori, she was adopted and she's... Look, don't get angry, and don't do anything bad because Balin really likes her a lot, best apprentice he's had, he said, but... uncle, Ori is orc-born.”

Thorin stared blankly at his niblings. Kili giggled again, but there was now more nervousness than amusement to it.

“Is this some sort of a joke?” Thorin asked them.

“No, uncle, she's...”

“I would have expected better from you than to call someone an orc because she's tall and not as pretty as others!”

Kili squeaked and hid behind her brother, who flinched and looked as if he wished he too had someone to hide behind.

“We're not making fun of her, she just really is!” he said. “Uncle, how can you not have seen it, heard of it? Everyone in Belegost speaks of it since Balin took agreed to teach her! People were so angry at him for taking in the daughter of Mad Ari, and not even her good daughter.”

“Mad Ari? The one who adopted an elf-born after the fall of Erebor?”

Thorin had heard of that woman. Everyone had heard of her, really, but he'd stopped paying attention after she'd come home one winter with a halfling-born. There had been some scandal over her last adoption too, but Thorin had had troubles of his own at the time, and had just ignored anyone who came to order him to do something. Adoption was a sacred act, and not even a king had the right to undo it.

Beside, he had assumed that she had to have picked up a man-born this time, to continue her collection.

“She found her youngest daughter after being attacked by orcs,” Fili explained. “Apparently, she's that sort of person who can't resist a baby, no matter what they were born as. And Ori's as good a dwarf as any, according to Balin, but she doesn't have a lot of friends, and... some people say she'll never be a true dwarf, so we thought, if Kili and me were friends with her, it might shut people up and...”

“If she was adopted and raised by a dwarf then she is one,” Thorin replied automatically.

It wasn't the first time people were contesting the dwarvishness of adopted people. They would not have dared in Erebor, but things were harder in the Blue Mountains, and it gave people some strange ideas. Still, to adopt an orc-born...

“Did Balin know this when he agreed to teach her?”

“Uncle, she's grey and she has pointy teeth,” Fili answered flatly. “It's rather hard to miss what she is. How _did_ you miss it?”

“I had other things in mind,” Thorin retorted. Then, thinking again about what he had seen of the girl, he added: “I've never seen her teeth under her scarf anyway, and barely any of her skin with the way she dresses. I thought she was a little odd, or very cold.”

Thorin frowned. He did not much like the idea of an orc-born dwarf. It was unheard of, and after so many people had lost family and friends to the orcs during the wars, it was in rather poor taste. But the deed was done, the child was there, and Thorin had seen nothing to complain about so far. Balin was happy of his new apprentice, he'd made a point of saying so often, and he wouldn't have praised her if she hadn't really pleased him.

Beside, she made _excellent_ tea, just strong enough to keep the mind sharp when working.

“I will leave it to you to decide if you want this girl's friendship or not,” Thorin decided. “She is a dwarf, and why should I object to you making friend with one of our own?”

They thanked him loudly for that permission, Kili even kissing him in gratitude. Having gotten what they had come for, the siblings did not linger long. Thorin half suspected that they would run straight to Balin's house to see that girl and talk to her, and he could only hope that they were not avoiding any work of theirs to do so.

He hoped, too, that he hadn't made a mistake in allowing this, but it was something that only time would tell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Balin had explicitely asked everyone not to say anything about Ori because he thought it would be best if he was the one to tell Thorin  
> and then he repeatidly had to explain that no, he hadn't had time yet, don't say anything for now, I'll take care of that soon.  
> I think after a while he just wanted to know how long it would take Thorin to get it?


	9. Grey havens

Dori was, without a doubt, one of the best weavers in the Ri family. She was also, and with even less doubt, the most bad tempered one. She was infinitely patient when working, and with her family (unless Nori was making a nuisance of himself, which happened often enough), but other than that, she got angry quicker than a warg with a toothache.

Which was why she absolutely refused to be the one to deal with the Grey Havens elves.

“But they pay more if you're the one bringing them fabric,” Ari argued with her once.

“Only because they hope that it'll make me stay,” Dori spat. “I swear, if a single one of them tries again to convince me that my place is with them, and that I must follow them West... What even is supposed to be West? I've looked at maps you know, there's just water, and then more water. Don't want to spend the rest of my life on a ship, surrounded by elves and with nothing but fish to eat.”

She didn't like fish. It was traitorous food, fighting even when it had died.

“Ori says they have an island in the West, one where only elves may go,” Ari explained.

“I would still be stuck with elves until the end of days, and probably still eating fish, because I don't think there's much else to do when you're surrounded by water.”

“Maybe sing?” Ari teased her, knowing how much the sadness of elven songs grated her.

It was all nothing but beautiful maiden whose beauty was lost forever, jewels that provoked wars, and the fact that things were better back in the days, or so Dori had understood from what the elves themselves and Ori had translated for her. Never a word for happiness that wasn't spoiled by despair the following sentence, not a tune you could dance too... And really, there was just so much singing about jewels.

Some elves had tried to explain to her why dwarves were greedy, but it wasn't her kind who had half destroyed the world for the sake of three vaguely pretty trinkets, and dwarves hadn't helped the evil one's plans either.

“I'll teach them some singing you'll see,” Dori grumbled. “Send me there again, and I'll let them hear the Hedgehog Song. Might even ask Ori to translate it for me! That'll show them what singing's for.”

Ari laughed. “Oh, just for that, I'd be tempted to send you!”

Dori pouted and frowned. Even as a joke the idea was unbearable. Dwarves, men, and even halflings all accepted that she was a dwarf, sooner or later, but the elves would not. Called her a fair maiden and whatnot, insisted that she was one of them. They said they wouldn't force her to stay, but she only trusted them up to a point. Ori had read several stories of elves to the twins, and Dori knew how much honour the tall ones had. There had been that princess, Luthien, who had trusted the wrong ones, and they'd tried to force her into a marriage. They had called _her_ a fair maiden too, and now Dori was just suspicious of anyone who used the words on her.

“Oh, don't be so tense, love,” her mother said, taking her hand. “I won't send you again if it pains you so much. It's not such a long trip, I can do it if I just get Feri to come with me... and I will. The boy is terrified that I'll end up adopting a man-born next time if I'm left without surveillance.”

The thought had her chuckling. Dori smiled too, but it was the smile of someone who knew the joke wasn't entirely silly. Since the day Ori had joined the family, she'd decided to be prepared for anything coming from her mother.

“It means you'll have to watch the twins when I'm gone of course.”

“Hardly the first time I'm doing it, mother,” Dori reminded her.

“And you'll have to watch Ori too. Make sure she isn't out in the night hours, we don't want anyone getting jumpy in the dark and feeling they have an excuse to attack her. And make sure the prince and the princess don't drag her into doing anything silly. They're good kids, but Mahal help us, between the two of them they don't have the good sense of a dead oyster sometimes, and they make Ori as bad as they are.”

Dori nodded. Fili and Kili were good friends and sincerely kind, but they'd still convinced Ori to go to the surface some months earlier, where a hunter had attacked them. The royal siblings had come out unhurt, but Ori had taken an arrow to the shoulder. She'd survived, and was healed by next morning, but now the family was a lot more careful about where she went with her friends.

“I'll be careful, mother,” Dori promised.

“And try not to argue with Nori if he comes home.”

“That one might be more difficult, but I'll try.”

“And make sure everyone eats vegetables!”

“Now you're asking the impossible,” Dori chuckled, and her mother laughed with her. “But I'll try anyway.”

And she would, too.

She'd do just anything, as long as she never had to get near an elf again.


	10. tell me a story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there are chapters that are planned, and then there are chapters that spontaneously happen whether you like it or not and who won't let you do anything else until they have been written  
> this chapter is the second sort

“Tell me a story,” Ori begged, and she looked ready to break into tears.

She'd been shaking pretty badly since she'd come home from her master's house. Nori had never seen her anything by happy about what she was learning. Every time he came home, she was chattering about this book that master Balin had given her to read, or that new law she was learning about. Kid didn't have a lot that could make her happy outside of the house, but her apprenticeship sure was one... but Balin's brother had the warrior sickness and reacted strangely to Ori at times, and on her way home from there, she also had plenty of time to be seen by people who might have shouted at her.

“Please Nori, tell me a story,” she repeated, cuddling next to him on the floor, by the fire. “ _Please_ Nori.”

It was ridiculous, the way Ori still did that cuddling thing. She was nearly twice his size now, but she didn't seem to have noticed and she still acted as if she were a baby when she needed comforting. It was ridiculous, but Nori must have been a pretty silly dwarf too, because he put one arm on her shoulder and pulled her closer.

“What kind of story do you want?”

“A happy one,” she sighed. “With good things only and where people aren't scared of anything and there are no monsters at all.”

One of these days then. Nori shot a look over his shoulder at Dori and Ari. They had both stopped their knitting at Ori's words. It had been a while since Ori had let anything get to her that much, not since the hunter incident

“Okay kid, I'll tell you a story,” Nori agreed.

The twins had been nowhere in the room mere seconds before, but the instant Nori agreed to a story, he had Bori on his knees and Tori on the other side of him.

“Can we listen too?” Tori asked. “Can there be a _princess_?”

“And fights!” Bori added. “Lots of fights!”

“It's Ori's story,” Nori protested. “She gets to choose what she wants in it, and if you protest or anything, you two don't get to listen, that clear?”

There was no protesting, partly because of the threat, partly because Ori had good taste for stories and liked when everyone got what they wanted.

“I'm okay with a princess,” Ori decided. “But maybe she's not a princess at first... and she's got to marry a king! _And_ if there's fighting, it's got to be because the princess is saving the king.”

“Then he's not a very good king,” Bori said.

“He is, but he's got a lot of enemies,” Ori explained, smiling shyly. “He is a very good king, very kind to people, especially those who don't have much money. He's a king who thinks poor people are worth just as much as rich ones, and that why he's got enemies!”

Nori smirked, and rolled his eyes. A couple years back, Ori just wanted a princess, and not even always a princess as such, as long as it was made clear that she was getting a story about someone like her, but lately she'd started wanting _romance_. Tori was more than fine with that, but Bori always grimaced. _Her_ stories were only allowed adventures and monsters.

“Okay kids, let's get started,” Nori had to say before any sort of a fight could break out. “Once upon a time, there was a king who was good and kind, but not half as smart as a king should have been. He wanted everyone to be happy and have a good home, but that didn't please some evil people who wanted all the money of the kingdom. So they used magic, they made a doll of the king, and they put the real king in a prison, right on top of a very high tower that was on top of the highest mountain in the world.”

“Didn't the king try to fight back?” Bori protested. “I would have fought back.”

“They got him in his sleep,” Tori retorted. “Didn't they Nori?”

Nori nodded, if only because he hadn't really considered how the king had ended up in that tower, and that the explanation sounded pretty good.

“When he was gone, the kingdom became a pretty terrible place,” Nori resumed. “There were awful thieves everywhere, and the rich people took all the money of the poor one, and the doll-king let them do anything they wanted of course, since he only said what they wanted. But in the kingdom, there was a girl, and she worked for the king. She was just a little nothing of a scribe, and there was no one among the rich people who paid attention to them. But she was the cleverest person in the kingdom, and she knew something wasn't right. She told herself 'our king used to be good and fair, and now he's weak and think of nothing but gold, that's not right. Someone has to see what's going on, and that's got to be me.'”

Glancing to his side, Nori saw that Ori's cheek were turning greyer, and there was the start of a real smile threatening at the corner of her mouth.

“Now, being a scribe, the girl knew a little about magic, on account of all these books she'd read. And she'd found herself a magic mirror to which she could ask just one question every day, but it'd always tell her the truth. 'Mirror,' she said, 'is the man sitting on the throne the real king?' and the mirror said it wasn't. The second day, she asked 'Mirror, is the real king still alive?' and the mirror said he was. The third day, she asked 'Mirror, where is the real king?' and the mirror told her where. On the fourth day, it told her how to go there. So the girl packed her mirror and her things, and she started walking how the mirror had told her.”

Nori paused for a second and looked at his audience. Ori was much better than she'd been when she had arrived, but the twins were getting a little restless. It was a story for their sister, but all stories had to be about the _whole_ family, or it wasn't fair. Nori, as per the rules of that particular brand of stories, was the mirror of truth (a role suggested by Dori once, and it had stuck because even the twins could see the irony of it), but it was time to introduce the little ones too.

“That first night out, the girl got very scared, because she had never left the palace before. And just as she was looking for a place to sleep, she heard to two animals fighting. She went to see, and there were...”

“A baby eagle!” Tori volunteered.

“A lion puppy!” Bori shouted.

“There were a little lion and a little eagle, fighting for the old bone of a sheep because they were so very hungry. Well, the girl had packed a little food, and they looked so hungry, she decided to share. And since she'd been so good to them, they decided to go with her to save the king. 'If you save the king,' she told them, 'he'll be so very grateful, he'll make sure you'll always have all the food you need.' And she knew it was true, 'cause he was a good king.”

Ori sighed, and nodded with a smile. Someday, Nori would have to investigate who it was that his little sister imagined whenever her heroine married a king. Might even have to tell Ari and Dori to keep an eye on that. He'd hated it when they'd started trying to monitor _his_ love life, but that was because he'd been capable of handling himself. Ori was a sweet little thing for all of her looks, and all too likely to end with a broken heart.

“Well, the girl and the lion and the eagle, they walked together, and they got to the mountain where was the king's tower. But it was a very, very high mountain, and the tower was even higher. The girl asked the eagle to go have a look, and when he came back, he told her that the tower didn't even have a door, just a window. Now, it was a _baby_ eagle, so it couldn't have carried the girl to the window. 'If only we had a rope,' the girl said, 'then you would have carried it to the window, and I'd have climbed and saved my king!'. She was quite in despair, so the lion huddled against her to comfort her.”

As if on cue, both twins abandoned Nori and pressed themselves against Ori, both of them somehow fitting on her lap, even if they were really growing big for that.

“The girl petted the lion, and she found that he had a very long mane. 'Lion, can I cut your mane to make a rope of it?' she asked. And the lion was angry at first, because a lion likes his mane as much as a dwarf likes their beard. But the girl had been nice, she'd given him food and she was so sad, so the lion said yes. The girl made a rope, the eagle carried it to the tower's window and tied it there, and the girl could climb. So she did just that, and when she got to the tower, there was just a little room in it. In that little room, there was a bed. And on that bed, there was the king, sleeping. The girl thought he was very handsome, which she'd never really seen before, because she was so busy doing good work for him. And since he was also so good and all, the girl realised that she was quite in love with him.”

Ori sighed again, louder this time, but it was mostly covered by the disgusted sound that Bori made, as if she were sick.

“Bori, do be nice,” Ari warned behind them. “We do not criticise when the story is for you, please make the same effort for others.”

“Sorry amad,” the girl mumbled, before pressing herself closer to her sister. “Sorry, Ori.”

“So then, the girl was in love,” Nori resumed as if nothing had happened. “It made her very happy for a moment, and then very sad, because he was a king and she was just a little scribe, and little scribes don't marry kings.”

Another sigh from Ori, sadder this time. Really something to watch then, with her always mixing with nobs these days. Maybe the king's nephew? Couldn't be his niece, or she'd have demanded that the girl in her story marry a queen. Or maybe it was someone else entirely... but the royal niblings were _nice_ to her, and Nori knew enough about being the weird kid to know that it was hard not to start crushing on the first person who treated you decently.

“Another problem of course was that the king was asleep. If he'd been awake, they'd both have gone down the rope and then home, but they couldn't. So the girl was a little sad. And then, all of a sudden, there was a great gust of wind, what with the tower being so high on the mountain, and that great wind tore away the rope.”

The three children gasped in horror, and behind them, even Dori inhaled sharply.

“But then the girl was trapped in the tower!” Bori cried. “And everything is sad for ever!”

“You promised a happy story,” Tori added, the way he always did as soon as things started looking bad, even if he knew that Nori always gave the happy ending he'd promised. “Nori, you have to get them out of there!”

“Well, the girl sure wanted to get out,” Nori retorted. “She was very sad and scared, and she cried a lot. At the foot of the tower the lion was crying too, because he'd seen the rope carried away, and the eagle kept flying up and down to cry with the girl and then the lion. They cried and cried, and since they were so high in the mountain, and there was such wind, the sound of their cries was carried all around, until a giant heard it. It was a great giant, the tallest giant to have ever been grown in the history of the world!”

Without looking, Nori knew that Dori was rolling her eyes, and that she'd be glaring at him after. He knew she'd be smiling too, though, because they'd always teased each other about their sizes, and that each was the only person the other allowed to do that.

“Was it a nice giant?” Ori asked softly.

“Nice enough for someone so tall,” Nori retorted with a smirk that made his younger siblings chuckle. “But she was grumpy that day, and the sound of all that crying made her even grumpier.”

“Why was she grumpy?” Bori asked.

“Because she had a stick in the...”

“ _Nori_ ,” Ari interrupted warningly.

Her son turned toward her, and shot her his most innocent smile.

“The giant has a stick in the _sole of her foot_ , I was going to say,” he claimed, the very picture of offended honour and virtue. Ari smiled, while Dori roller her eyes again, and Nori turned back to the children. “So, the giant came to see who was crying like that. She looked into the tower, and saw the girl crying, and asked why she was doing that. The girl said 'I am crying because I am in love with the king who was imprisoned here by evil people. I had come to save him, but he is asleep and can't come down the rope with me, and anyway the wind stole my rope so I shall stay here for ever and die of thirst and hunger. That's why I'm crying.' The giant thought it was a good reason to cry, and she felt a little sorry for the girl. 'I can't wake your king,' she said, 'but if you push him into my hand, and come on it too, I can get the too of you out of the tower. In exchange, you have to remove the stick that hurts my foot.' And it was a fair offer, so the girl agreed, and the giant got them back on the ground.”

“Did the girl remove the stick?”

“Took some help from the lion and the eagle, but she did it. And then, she asked the giant if she would take them all back to the kingdom, because surely there, they'd find a way to wake the king again. 'The king is a good king,' the girl told the giant, 'he will reward you if you help him reclaim his kingdom, and give you fine boots so that no stick ever again hurts your feet!' The giant agreed of course, because she'd always fancied having some pretty boots, being a little _vain_ and all.”

“ _Hilarious_ ,” Dori grumbled.

“The giant was so tall, it was very fast to go back to the palace,” Nori continued, grinning at the interruption. “But of course, she was so tall that the evil people saw her coming, and they were very scared, so they told the doll-king to send soldiers to stop her. And when they saw the giant was carrying the girl and the sleeping king, they sent even more soldiers, because they didn't want the real king to get his kingdom back! And the giant was very tall yeah, but there were a lot of soldiers, so she couldn't fight them all on her own, so...”

“The lion jumped down and fought the soldiers too!” Bori squealed, miming an intense fight and almost punching Ori's jaw.

“And the eagle did the same!” Tori added, flapping his arms like wings. _He_ did hit Ori. He apologized, but she was so deep in the story that she didn't notice anything.

“They fought fiercely, the three of them,” Nori agreed. “There were many soldiers, but the giant, the lion and the eagle were very strong, and they liked the girl so much, they wanted to help and protect her against all bad people. And while they were fighting, the girl took the king in her arms and she ran with him to the throne room where the doll-king was. It really was just a doll then, because all the rich people had gone off to fight the giant, and there was no one to give it orders. But the girl didn't know what to do, because the doll couldn't tell her how to wake the king, and the king was still sleeping. And then she thought...”

“The mirror!” Ori exclaimed. “Oh, she's going to ask the mirror, right?”

“You bet she did. And the mirror said 'Little scribe, you have to break me on the floor. There will be shards. You must take the sharpest one, and stab the doll's heart with it, that will wake the king.' It made the girl sad, because she liked the mirror and it had helped her a lot, but she trusted it and did as it said. She broke the mirror, and took the most sharp looking shard in her hand. It was so sharp that it cut her hands and made her bleed, but she didn't care, because she was doing that for the king. So even though she was hurt, she stabbed the doll. There was a great light then, and the girl was forced to close her eyes and she even _fainted_!”

The kids had stopped breathing and were looking at Nori with wide eyes. The world could have ended and they wouldn't have noticed, all because there was a _story_.

“When the girl opened her eyes again, the doll was gone,” Nori said with a softer voice. “Instead, there was the most beautiful lady in the entire world, and she seemed so very kind that the girl felt at peace just looking at her. And that beautiful lady, she had a boy in her arms. 'I am the queen of fairies,' the lady said, 'and evil people had turned me into a doll, and my son into a mirror. You have saved us, little scribe, and for this, you are now a princess of the fairy, and your friends are princes and princesses too.' The girl was happy, and then she was happier still when she saw that the king was awake again, and smiling at her. 'Little scribe,' he said, 'I know all that you have done for me. You are brave and kind, and I want you for my queen.' The little scribe agreed, and they were married the next day. There was a great feast, with special food for the prince Lion, and the prince Eagle, and the princess giant got the nicest, most comfortable boots in the world, as a present from the fairy queen, and a very beautiful shawl of pearl and lace as a present from the king.”

“And the king and the girl, were they happy?” Ori asked.

“No one has ever been happier,” Nori assured her. “Because they were both very kind, and very brave, and they both wanted to make the kingdom a very happy place.”

Ori sighed happily, smiling the wide, toothy smile she only had when she was too relaxed and content to care about looking scary.

“Is it a _true_ story?” Bori asked, more for the tradition than out of real doubt.

“Truer than true,” Nori promised with a wink, as always. “It's a mirror that told it to me.”


	11. Joining the quest - Nori

There was light, and it was a bad thing. There was noise, and it was an even worse thing. There was pain, which wasn't so great but could be dealt with. There were smells, and frankly if they didn't dissipate very soon, Nori's stomach was going to get empty very, very fast. The combination of all this told him that he had a hungover, and that he wasn't home. Home could be noisy, but it was never smelly like that.

Cracking an eye open confirmed the situation. Nori wasn't home. He was somewhere he didn't know. Somewhere with...

...bars?

Nori sat up. He sat up too fast and his head started spinning. Or that might have been the hungover. Or the panic.

The thing about Nori was that he'd never gotten himself arrested ever. Not many people who could say that after twenty years in the job. Of course, it helped that he was small and more slippery than a fucking eel. It also helped that guards were more careful when dealing with hobbit-borns and didn't really dare to grab him too tight, whereas he wasn't afraid at all to kick them hard in the shin and to fight dirty.

No one pitied Nori without paying the price for it.

So Nori had never been arrested before, and he knew he wasn't ever going to be arrested again, mostly because it wasn't too likely they'd let him leave ever. Burglary and poaching and pickpocketing put together meant something like twenty or thirty years of prison at the very least. Not too much for a dwarf-born, but at sixty or seventy, Nori would be old. _If_ he even lasted that long.

And maybe that had been someone's plan. He remembered being paid to start a fight in old Frar's tavern, something bad enough that the guards would have to go there, meaning they'd be less likely to pay attention to what was going on in one tunnel that old Frar used to bring into Belegost some merchandise of dubious origin. It was an easy job, and he was supposed to be given only beer cut with plenty of water, to keep his head clear. But someone must have put something else in it, or else he wouldn't have such a blasted headache, and he wouldn't be stuck in a bloody prison cell.

How was he even going to warn the family? Ari would think that he'd finally gone off to live with hobbits, she'd be _heartbroken_.

It was a relief when Nori saw a guard coming, because maybe he could get a message out at least.

And then the guard turned out to be Dwalin, and Nori knew he was truly fucked, because Dwalin couldn't be corrupted, and especially not by someone who'd made a hobby of annoying him.

“Well, look who's here,” the large dwarf sniggered. “Didn't run fast enough this time?”

“Go fuck a troll. I ain't done nothing, you can't keep me here just 'cause someone smashed my head in a fight where I was an _innocent_ bystander.”

Dwalin smile. “Innocent, eh? Tell that to our pile of reports 'gainst you. I think it's taller than you are. No, we've got you this time, you're not getting away so easily. There's a judge waiting for you, and we're calling in witnesses, and you're going to spend the rest of your life in here.”

Nori shrugged, and then rolled his eyes too, just to make it clear how much he didn't care. Just because he'd lost didn't mean he was about to let anyone think _they'd_ won. Beside he didn't like the way Dwalin was looking at him. Like he was a pony for sale on the market, or a fucking blade that he wasn't sure was made of iron or steel.

“What do you want now?” Nori growled. “Don't you have anyone else to fucking taunt?”

“Just thinking...”

“That'd be a first.”

Dwalin glared, and Nori glared back. He'd spent most of his life being looked down on by people who thought they had more value than him because of three and a half hairs growing on their chin. He'd never let it impress him before. Wasn't about to start now.

“You'd better learn to watch that mouth,” Dwalin said. “It'll get you in trouble in here. No one in prison likes snarky people, especially not when they're your size.”

“Oh, but won't guards _protect_ me?” Nori sighed theatrically. “Thought it was their _job_ and all.”

“They can't be everywhere. So learn to shut up, or you won't last two days here.”

Once more, Nori shrugged. Two days, two years, two decades, it didn't make much of a difference. He'd be getting out of there either old or dead. Might as well have fun and piss off a few people before that.

He told Dwalin, and the large dwarf couldn't help a smirk.

“You're your mother's son, no doubt. And that's why I'll get you out of here.”

Nori startled, and stared at the guard who laughed.

“Got your attention? Good. Look, you're a little shit,” Dwalin said, as if it were so obvious it was hardly worth mentioning. Which it probably was, so Nori didn't feel particularly offended. “You've pissed off every single guard I know, a few nobles, anyone who owns hunting grounds, and probably a lot of other people. I should let your rot here, because you deserve it.”

There was a pause, and Nori sighed. He didn't like when people offered him something and tried to make it sound like a favour, even when it was one.

“But you won't do it, because...?”

“Because what you do, you do well. So tell me, have you ever thought of working for the king?”

Nori laughed, harder than he ever had.

He stopped laughing when he noticed that Dwalin still looked serious.

Word on the street was that the guard was the king's cousin, and his friend. Maybe more, although Nori had seen Thorin once, and the thought of him taking lovers was even more hilarious than the idea of him hiring Nori.

“What sort of a job would that be? I don't do assassinations, let's be clear. It's nasty business, makes you dirty for dinner and all.”

And his amad would never have forgiven it. She'd be pissed as heck when she'd know for sure what sort of a job he had, but at least he'd never killed anyone, and that was something. Maybe she'd come visit him, if he survived until visiting day.

“You won't have to kill anyone,” Dwalin promised. “Not unless they try to kill us first. It'd just be orcs maybe, if we're not lucky. Goblins. But no people. And you'd get pardoned. Might even get _paid_.”

That sounded fair enough. Bit _too_ fair, really. Considering that Nori had ended where he was because he'd just taken a job too easy that paid too well, he wasn't in a mood to trust anyone, and certainly not a nobby guard.

“ _What_ sort of a job is it?”

“ _Would_ you serve the king?”

“If the job's half honest and half fun, I'll even kiss his ass if that's what he likes,” Nori claimed. “But my 'mad didn't raise a fool, and I don't take work before being told what I'll do. You tell me and I'll see if I agreed. But if I agree, I'll hold my part of the contract until it's filled, so you'd better see that your king does too.”

It didn't make Dwalin too happy to have his king's honesty doubted, but he'd survive. Nobs always survived. Thieves who agreed to work for them at too good a price, not always.

“Don't let yourself get killed in the next two days,” Dwalin ordered. “I'll talk to Thorin about you, so you'd better stay alive until I can convince him. Until then, enjoy your stay.”

Nori shrugged again, and made a point of not watching Dwalin go. Whatever he'd just gotten himself into, it reeked of trouble and danger, and he'd be lucky if he got out of it alive. He wasn't even asking for money, or to keep all his limbs and fingers. Just not dying was probably going to be hard enough, because nobs only turned to people like him when their problems were becoming a little too real for them.

Ah, well.

Belegost had started to feel _boring_ anyway.


	12. Joining the quest - Ori

It was a quiet afternoon, and Ori was alone in lord Balin's house when King Thorin came knocking at the door, lord Dwalin with him. It was not unusual for them to come by these days, and sometimes they had lord Gloin with them too. Something about a trip they were preparing, Ori had overheard whenever she brought them tea, although she always pretended she had no idea what they were doing.

“I'm very sorry your highness,” she told the king, bowing deferentially and then keeping her head low. “Lord Dwalin.” She bowed again, though not as much, because it annoyed the tall dwarf when people bowed to him in his own house. “My master is not here. He has gone to run an errand. I can tell you where you might find him, or will you wait here for his return?”

“I think we shall wait,” Thorin replied, stepping in. “And we shall very much appreciate it if you made us some tea.”

“Bring the biscuits too,” Dwalin added, following the king. “Can't discuss anything important on an empty stomach.”

Closing the door behind them, Ori smiled to herself. It was not _everyone_ whose tea had been complimented by a king, she thought as she walked to the kitchen. Lord Balin had once joked that the king insisted to have their meetings here just for her tea. Of course she'd had a lot of training at home, because amad took her tea one way, but Dori liked it another way (and wasn't she _ever_ so picky about it, too), and then there was the way Ori herself preferred it (Nori was easy because he just wanted a lot of sugar and a lot of milk, and the twins weren't allowed tea because it might get them excited).

It wasn't as complicated as calculating which days had a good energy and which ones were bad luck, or to write down a contract so there would be no loophole in it, but making good tea was something a lot more people understood and enjoyed.

Thorin and Dwalin quite ignored her when she brought the tea and biscuits into the main room, but Ori didn't mind. Being ignored was better than being stared at, and beside, it meant she could listen a bit to conversations. She rather liked that, especially when Thorin was there, because it always sounded so important, and he had a nice voice.

“That makes just ten of us,” Dwalin was saying when Ori came in and started serving the tea.

“It'll be just eleven if we take him,” Thorin countered, smiling when Ori gave him his cup. “And that eleventh is a criminal. I need people I can trust, Dwalin, not thieves and throat-cutters.”

A very fair point, Ori thought, checking one last time that they had everything they needed. They'd call her if they needed more biscuits anyway. She started walking toward lord Balin's office, where work awaited her.

“Nori's no ordinary criminal,” Dwalin protested, and Ori froze. “Doesn't do it for money, he just does it because it's fun. And he's never harmed a dwarf as far as I know, or at least never one who didn't deserve it. I won't say he's honest because Maker knows he's not, but if you ask him to follow you, he will. Never broken a contract with anyone, or he'd missing a few fingers. Thieves don't like to be betrayed.”

That sounded like her Nori, Ori thought. Only, it couldn't be of course. But she in case, she decided to not close the door of the office, and to listen a bit longer. It wasn't very right of her, and she'd been told often how important it was for her to be good, but she was curious.

“Even if he has an honour of sorts, I am not sure I want to hire a thief who was caught,” Thorin pointed out.

“It was a piece of luck, no more. Tavern brawl and he was part of it. Probably started it even, and if that's the case, he was paid for that. That's what he does,” Dwalin explained. “He's a professional distraction. Gets people looking in the wrong direction to let others do what they have to do. And he's pretty good at escaping too, and at climbing. He's a squirrel trapped in the wrong shape. We've been trying to get him for years now, and it's taken an accident for it to happen.”

Ori had to put a hand on her mouth to keep silent. That really did sound like her brother's stories, the ones he told the twins. And he hadn't been home in a few days, even though he hadn't argued with Dori at all lately... and that was strange but she hadn't worried, because it was like Nori to go away for no reason sometimes. Feet too big to stay in place, Dori always said. But if he'd been arrested...

“You'll be responsible for him if he comes,” Thorin warned, and that meant that he _was_ going to agree. “And I will meet him myself before anything is decided. I cannot... ah, your brother is returning!”

They both rose to go greet lord Balin, while Ori rushed to her desk and did her best to look very busy and studious. Luckily her master only glanced in the office to make sure she was working, and then closed the door, properly this time. She tried to go back to what she was meant to do, but it proved quite impossible.

She was too worried for it.

 

Ori didn't have the courage to ask about what she'd heard that day, but she did it the following one, over lunch. She'd noticed that master Balin was often a little less guarded after a good meal, so that was when she took her chance, right after they had finished dessert (a pie she'd made herself, precisely for that reason).

“Mister Balin, I've been meaning to ask...” she started, and it sounded not quite right, but there was no other way around it. “That is, while I was serving tea to his majesty yesterday, I've heard him and your lord brother talk about something, and... I shouldn't have listened I know, but I couldn't quite help it you see, and...”

“To the point, lass?”

“Yes, master. It's just. I heard them talking of someone that had been arrested, and it sounded a lot like my brother, master. They said it was someone called Nori?”

Balin stared down at his empty plate, a grim look on him.

“Yes, I feared it was him,” he admitted. “It is not not so common a name after all, and there are not so many halfling-born that there might be a confusion... But I did not want to tell you, because this whole business is supposed to be secret... Still, you're a clever girl, you must have guessed something?”

“Yes, master. The king wants to go back to Erebor.”

Thorin had never said so, not in front of her, but there were not many things that could make his eyes light up that way. And it was why they needed secrecy, as much as for a large contract, only lord Dwalin wasn't usually involved in _those_ , and neither were the king's niblings... and they'd mentioned lord Oin, who could read the portents, and then Balin had asked her to research such strange things for contracts lately...

“Please don't take my brother there, master!” she pleaded. “Please, tell the king not to! Nori's brave, but he's not a warrior!”

“I am sorry,” Balin sighed, one hand on her shoulder. “But he has signed a contract already. We will be leaving in little less than a month now.”

“Oh,” she answered sadly. “I understand. Thank you for telling me, master. And fear not, I will keep the secret.”

The old dwarf assured her that he had never doubted she would, and asked if she wanted to go home, considering the news about her brother. She declined, and went to work as well as she could.

She did not make a huge lot of progress on the translation she was busy with that day, but before evening, she had a plan.

Her appearance was a danger to them all, she was _severely_ unprepared for a trip on the surface, and there was the matter of her age that could pose a problem, but she was clever and she knew what to say to convince them. Besides, she'd read about orcs, especially after she'd been shot by that hunter.

Thorin wouldn't like to admit it, because he was _kind_ , but he would _certainly_ find uses for someone who could be killed almost only by decapitation or being stabbed through a vital organ.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not happy with this chapter but I don't know how to rewrite it blarg orz


	13. Joining the quest - Dori

The twins were the first up that morning, and it should have made Dori suspicious already. Most of the time Ori was the first in the kitchen, even on a day off. She wasn't like Dori, who slept only when she felt like it, but she _did_ need a lot less sleep than the rest of the family.

Dori didn't have a lot of time to ponder on that though. Ari had left two days before for the Grey Havens, meaning she was in charge of the children, and that meant a lot of work in the mornings. They had to be fed and dressed, and their hair had to be braided. That was one hour of work, two if they were in a foul temper... which they were that morning. Dori had rarely seen them so bad. Bori had to be dressed, as if she were still ten, and Tori managed to spill food on his clothes twice.

She wondered about that, later.

But right then, she had to take the twins to the class they had started going to that winter. It was just for basic things, counting, reading and spelling, along with some history and more serious lessons on Khuzdul than what they could get at home. Bori loved all of it, but Tori had trouble with his letters and numbers, even though he did work hard. Nori was like that too, so Ari joked sometimes that it must have run in the family.

By the time Dori came home, she was no longer thinking about Ori. Her little sister didn't seem to be anywhere around, but it was a day off for her, so she'd most likely gone to see Fili and Kili. She'd be back for lunch, or for dinner if the three of them decided to grab something to eat in the market. Until then, Dori would be home alone, and she fully intended to take full advantage of it to work.

She had barely sit down when the door opened, and Ori came in.

“Back already?” Dori noted, barely looking up from her work. “Were they busy?”

Ori froze, as she always did when she was caught doing something wrong, and she hunched up, trying to make herself smaller.

“Please don't be angry!” she squeaked.

It was not a good start, Dori decided. Her sister was never good at hiding things, not from family, but it had been years since she'd done anything for which she truly feared anyone's anger. Last time Ori had used these exact words, it was because she'd come home with an arrow in her shoulder and she'd felt it was her fault somehow.

“Oh dear, what _have_ you done this time?”

“You're going to be so _angry_ ,” Ori lamented. “You and amad both. Oh, you'll be so mad at me, but I had to! You have to agree, I _had_ to!”

“I can't very well agree with anything until you've told me what you've done,” Dori protested, but Ori was too nervous to speak. She didn't seem to be hurt, so it must really have been something _she_ had done, rather than something done to her.

Calmly, Dori stood up and went to take her sister's hand. She gently guided Ori to the kitchen, made her sit on a chair, and started preparing some tea for her. The water had just been put on the fire when Ori spoke again.

“I've signed up to join king Thorin in his attempt to reclaim the kingdom of Erebor!” she squeaked. “We are leaving at the end of the week.”

“You've _what_?”

At this point, Dori had wondered if her sister hadn't kissed someone, or more than kissed them maybe. Ori did devour romance stories after all, dear girl, and with all that they had warned her to be careful if she ever laid with someone, she would have worried about angering them.

Ori having a lover would have been scary news, the start of all sorts of problems.

It would have been better than her going after a _dragon_ , though.

“Oh, you're angry!” Ori cried. “I knew you'd be angry! But I had to, I just had to! Dori, Nori was going and he's so small and fragile, and they're going to be in such danger, I had to go too, to protect him!”

“And who will protect you?” Dori retorted flatly, too shocked for anger. “Your brother knows how to avoid a fight when he can't win it, and he probably knows a lot about winning them, but you? Ori, you're a scribe, you won't last... and you're too young anyway, you can't sign contracts without mother!”

There was the shadow of a defiant smile on the girl's lips. For all of their differences, it made her look almost like Nori.

“I'd be too young if I were dwarf-born,” she said proudly, “but I'm not. I've checked you know, and for hobbit-borns and man-borns, they are allowed to sign contracts at twenty, and that's just my age, and lord Balin agreed that orc-borns probably age more like that than like elf-borns or dwarf-borns, so I was allowed.”

“But you're not a fighter! Ori, you don't even have a weapon! What will you take to Erebor, your _slingshot_?”

Ori hunched for a second, and then sat straight.

“You can't stop it now anyway,” she claimed, her voice shaking slightly. “I have signed the contract, I am part of the king's company, and I'm going to Erebor with him and Nori!” Ori jumped from her chair, and away from Dori. “I'm going! I'll be the king's scribe and I will fight for him and even die for him if I have to, and I will show everyone that I'm _good_!”

It had to be the first time that Dori could see her sister stand so straight, when Ori had always taken such pains to make herself small. It was the first time, too, that her youngest sister so violently flinched away from her touch when Dori tried to take her in her arms.

“I'm _going_ ,” Ori repeated, before running away, towards the room she shared with the twins.

Left alone with her thoughts, Dori lost track of time, and of everything else. She must have removed the boiling water from the fire though, and even made tea, because all of a sudden, she had a cup in hand, hot enough to burn her fingers.

She had to go get the twins home for lunch, she knew. And then, she would bring them to cousin Siri, who had a little girl their age, and who was still on speaking terms with their mother, friendly even. Siri would understand, and then, it would only be for a week or two, maybe three if the road were bad and Ari took longer to come home. In the meantime, the twins would be cared for.

Because Mahal help her, someone had to make sure that Ori would be safe working for Thorin, that Nori wouldn't get into too much trouble, and she was the only who could.


	14. Bilbo

There were dwarves in Bilbo's dining room. Ten of them at least. Possibly twelve, although two of them were... odd looking. And a wizard. That was thirteen people in his house whom he had never invited at all, which was a very upsetting state of being. Thirteen people eating his provisions. He could have lasted at least a _week_ with what had been in his pantry, and these perfect strangers were devouring it all. He might have to do without any breakfasts in the morning, and he would certainly have to go to the market. It wasn't his market day at all. People would remark on it and there would be gossiping probably, which was very distasteful.

He was trying to explain this to Gandalf, because all of this was his fault. It was him who had brought all these people after all.

“The tall one dented the ceiling earlier!” Bilbo complained, loudly, to make sure that whatever he was, the tall creature with white hair would know that his horrible behaviour had not been ignored. "He is a _menace_!"

“I believe that Dori is actually a woman,” Gandalf corrected. “And I am told that her size is a sensitive subject, so I wouldn't mention it if I were you. She is given to... bouts of temperament, her siblings informed me, and might get angry.”

Bilbo almost protested that this was his house and he wasn't about to let a bunch of Big People tell him what he could and couldn't do, but since he couldn't do that without mentioning her size, he didn't. He still didn't like the whole thing. Temperamental strangers in his house, eating his food, destroying his ceiling, _and_ someone had ruined his bathroom, too.

This was _not_ how civilised people behaved.

“Civilised people don't come into people's house without an invitation!” he told Gandalf. “And they don't take their host's house for granted, and...”

There was a gentle tap on Bilbo's shoulder. He turned to see who was disturbing his rant, and yelped.

“Excuse me,” said a horrific, greyish monster with sharp teeth and dark eyes, “but what should I do with my plate?”

It was the one who had been hidden in a scarf and a wool hat when he had arrived, and Bilbo had thought at the time that he was odd, too tall for a dwarf, but there had been so much odd happening at once that he hadn't lost too much time on this. But it was warm inside, the creature had undressed a little and…

Memories came to him now of a cold winter, when he'd been but a child, and creatures with such teeth and skin had attacked the Shire, hunting people, stealing food and anything they could find... rumours of people found devoured, and not all of them by wolves, but instead by…

“ _Orc_ ,” he whispered, and wished he had something to protect himself with, even just a kitchen knife...

He had hope for a second, when one of the dwarves came toward them. The wars of orcs and dwarves were the stuff of legend, having gone on for centuries people said. Dwarves could not suffer to see one of these monsters alive, and no matter how the creature had managed to come inside, they would make sure it never left again. Certainly, this blond boy would take out a sword and...

“Here, give this to me, Ori,” the dwarf said, grabbing a plate from the orc's hands and throwing it away.

 _Throwing it_.

Bilbo's mother's finest china.

Thrown across the _corridor_.

And certainly, another dwarf caught it, but then _he_ threw it too, in direction of the kitchen this time. Suddenly, the orc was the last of Bilbo's problems, because this was his mother's _belongings_ that these barbarous dwarves were trying to ruin. They even dared to break into song about it, _monsters_ that they were.

It was a little while before Bilbo remembered the orc. Not until that very rude last dwarf had joined them, sneering at Bilbo before starting to talk about dragons and gold and secret passages and who knew what other horrors. And all of that in Bilbo's dining room still, which was the very last place in the world were anyone should have mentioned such things.

And the orc was there, listening with the others, cheering with them, and never once looking away from that Thorin dwarf. The monster was sitting with the very tall person (who, Bilbo was starting to notice, looked rather more like an elf than like a dwarf, except for the fact that he'd never heard of an elf travelling with dwarves, or even less of one who could suffer the presence of a living orc) and a very, very small one, smaller than Bilbo himself in fact. That small one looked almost hobbitish, except no hobbit in their right mind would ever go on an adventure as silly and dangerous as that one, and certainly not wearing _those_ clothes. They looked like a funny picture in a children's book together, but no one was pointing and laughing, so Bilbo did his best to avoid staring.

The talk of dragon soon distracted him anyway.

Especially when it turned out that these dwarves appeared to expect _him_ to go into the dragon's _lair_.

Well, they could hope all they wanted, Bilbo was never getting anywhere so dangerous as that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have recently helped at a birthday party where there were fourteen kids age 5-7 for two adults (me included) and I'll be honest, I now have a LOT more sympathy for Bilbo and Gandalf than I did before.  
> Also i can't be arsed to check when the Fell Winter actually happened in canon but I needed ages to match so I've decided that Bilbo was pretty young at the time (so that Nori and him don't have much of an age difference)(or else Nori would have been very, very young)


	15. gandalf

Gandalf was riding his horse far too close to Thorin's pony for the king or his mount's comfort, but his subtle hints on that subject had fallen on a deaf ear. The wizard seemed too deep in thought to notice anything at all, or it might just have been the pipe he was smoking. Halfling leaf was powerful, far more than the one dwarves usually smoked, and in Belegost halfling leaf was carefully controlled, allowed only for medical uses... but in the Shire, they just used it for fun.

 _Halflings_ , Thorin thought with no little amount of disdain.

Good thing that Gandalf's grocer had refused to come in the end. People like that had no place on a quest such as this one. It would be hard enough to deal with people's reactions to Mad Ari's children, so taking a halfling with them...

“Of course,” Gandalf said after a while, “this would have been much easier if you had warned me that you already had a hobbit in you company.”

Thorin glared at the wizard.

“There is no halfling.”

“I had noticed about the elf,” Gandalf continued as if he hadn't heard. “And the... other one. But if you had told me that Nori is a hobbit...”

“He is not,” Thorin claimed. “Nori is a dwarf, as much as I am. And I suppose it is Dori you are calling an elf, on account of her size, but she is a dwarf. So is her sister Ori. You are the only one here to not be a dwarf, and you would do well to remember it.”

The wizard seemed confused, for which Thorin felt a certain cruel amusement. It was not every day that one could confuse a wizard. All the same, he was ready to bet that if they had been elves, or men, or even hobbit, Gandalf would have learned long ago about their traditions. Wizards didn't ask elves why they dressed their men so different from their women, or why they kept said women away from war, but it was apparently fair game to ask a dwarf if he really was a dwarf.

“I only meant that they were not like most other dwarves,” Gandalf tried to correct.

“No two dwarves are alike. We are not _elves_.”

Maybe that was why elven men and women dressed so different, actually, because without variety in their clothes, they all looked the damn same. So did Men and halflings of course but they were not as bad as elves.

Gandalf took a moment to consider that.

“They were not dwarves from birth,” he carefully rephrased and that was indeed the better way to go about it.

“Dwarves are raised, not born,” Thorin replied. “A dwarf-born who would grow among Men or elves, cut from their kin, would not be a true dwarf, not unless they started learning. Nori and his sibling were adopted and raised as dwarves, no one among our people would call them otherwise.”

Not quite true of course, especially not about little Ori. Gloin and Dwalin in particular still had problems with her, although they had both accepted that have her as a companion. She’d come for her brother after all, and that was what any true dwarf would have done.

Thorin had been worried about Bifur too, considering his history, but he seemed to like Ori well enough. If anything, Bifur appeared glad that there was someone in the company who didn’t mind having entire conversations in Khuzdul. Little Ori seemed to like him back, for which Thorin was glad too. She had too much of Kili's recklessness, and of Fili's eagerness to please. His niblings had rubbed off on her and maybe Bifur would too, but with hopefully less dramatic results.

“Well then, I wish you had told me that Nori was born as a hobbit,” Gandalf said. “And about the other two, too. It does make things different.”

“It is not considered polite to discuss these things,” Thorin retorted. Which was true, although everyone did it anyway when Ari’s brood was concerned. “And what does it change? I told you we already had a burglar of our own, and you told me he wouldn’t be enough. Nori will have to do now that your burglar decided he wasn’t up to it after all.”

Gandalf grimaced at the memory, and so did Thorin. If that was all the good advice and help that wizard could give them…

“Well, I imagine that master Nori might do,” Gandalf said. “Although there could be old magic in action, and I’m not entirely sure…”

Sure of what, Thorin never knew, because they were interrupted by the unexpected arrival of Gandalf’s halfling. He explained proudly that he _was_ coming with them after all, waving proudly his contract in front of Balin’s nose. After the halfling’s fainting spell the night before, Balin ought to have declared the contract void, but before Thorin could say anything to that intent, the older dwarf was welcoming Bilbo Baggins among them.

Balin had always had a soft spot for small creatures that were sure to bring trouble.

The best Thorin could hope for now was that Bilbo Baggins would change his mind before they reached the next town, or that he'd turn out as surprisingly brilliant as little Ori.

Seeing the halfling trying to stir his pony, Thorin was rather ready to bet it'd be the first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> due to having recently bought a new video game and to needing to actually get things done at work, this is the end of what I had written in advance, meaning from now on, updates will be irregular, sorry D:


End file.
